Letters Letters Letters

for individual letters, see alphabets page

I have been in heaven this week working on the letter project. I made a discovery, again, that there are all kinds of processes that I neglect, that I need to keep in my pocket for teaching.

I am inspired by the "craft-i-ness" (both meanings) of some artists working currently. Artists such as the ones that we looked at in the book "By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art" edited by Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro.
There was a time, my time coming up in the art community, that women artists were sometimes criticized and taken less seriously for work that seemed to hover between art and craft. Or craft was considered media belonging to women solely. I am extremely happy that I have seen a major shift away from that perspective over the last 20 or so years. This new work that we've examined in class is very inspiring. I think sometimes we fall back on traditional materials: paint, pastels, clay, etc... and I love this class for the impetus it provides for concentrated and focused consideration of materials. I also appreciate the carefully thought-out choice of using type, letters and font exploration as a theme for all the project ideas as well as all the creative trajectories that have come from the original ideas.

I was thrilled to see that our next endeavor would be a book, and book making. I was really taken a-back last semester when my cooperating teacher did a simple book with her class. The students LOVED the project. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. There is a utilitarian element to creating a book, that the book itself is a piece/work of art , and yet can be used often to create other things, written or visual, or both. I love the intimacy of a hand-made book and the processes of working with paper-as-media, something other than a blank slate.

I appreciated our lengthy critique of the sketch-books for the reason that it sent me off in a specific creative direction for this weeks sketches. Although, I didn't quite achieve what I wanted to, as far as materials go, it has put a bee in my bonnet to experiment with several possible media to achieve the effect that I see in my head!